https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/11/us/politics/jan-6-trump-cassidy-hutchinson-justice.html
"WASHINGTON — For the past year and a half, the Justice Department has approached former President Donald J. Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results with a follow-the-evidence strategy that to critics appeared to border on paralysis — and that limited discussions of his role, even inside the department.
Then came Cassidy Hutchinson.
The electrifying public testimony delivered last month to the House Jan. 6 panel by Ms. Hutchinson, a former White House aide who was witness to many key moments, jolted top Justice Department officials into discussing the topic of Mr. Trump more directly, at times in the presence of Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco.
In conversations at the department the day after Ms. Hutchinson’s appearance, some of which included Ms. Monaco, officials talked about the pressure that the testimony created to scrutinize Mr. Trump’s potential criminal culpability and whether he intended to break the law.
Ms. Hutchinson’s disclosures seemed to have opened a path to broaching the most sensitive topic of all: Mr. Trump’s own actions ahead of the attack.
Department officials have said Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony did not alter their investigative strategy to methodically work their way from lower-level actors up to higher rungs of power. “The only pressure I feel, and the only pressure that our line prosecutors feel, is to do the right thing,” Mr. Garland said this spring.
But some of her explosive assertions — that Mr. Trump knew some of his supporters at a rally on Jan. 6, 2021, were armed, that he desperately wanted to join them as they marched to the Capitol and that the White House’s top lawyer feared Mr. Trump’s conduct could lead to criminal charges — were largely new to them and grabbed their attention.
Overt discussion of Mr. Trump and his behavior had been rare, except as a motive for the actions of others, a subtle but significant change that was underway even before Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony.
A small team of prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington has ramped up its investigation into a scheme to install fake state electors, spearheaded by lawyers who were in frequent contact with Mr. Trump. And the Justice Department’s watchdog is investigating efforts undertaken by Jeffrey Clark, a former department official who discussed the plan with Mr. Trump, to undo the results of the election.
A flurry of recent subpoenas related to the electors inquiry and raids initiated by the inspector general into Mr. Clark — which were done with the knowledge of the department’s senior leaders — suggest that those investigations are accelerating. At the very least, those moves indicate that prosecutors are inching closer to the former president...."
"WASHINGTON — For the past year and a half, the Justice Department has approached former President Donald J. Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results with a follow-the-evidence strategy that to critics appeared to border on paralysis — and that limited discussions of his role, even inside the department.
Then came Cassidy Hutchinson.
The electrifying public testimony delivered last month to the House Jan. 6 panel by Ms. Hutchinson, a former White House aide who was witness to many key moments, jolted top Justice Department officials into discussing the topic of Mr. Trump more directly, at times in the presence of Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco.
In conversations at the department the day after Ms. Hutchinson’s appearance, some of which included Ms. Monaco, officials talked about the pressure that the testimony created to scrutinize Mr. Trump’s potential criminal culpability and whether he intended to break the law.
Ms. Hutchinson’s disclosures seemed to have opened a path to broaching the most sensitive topic of all: Mr. Trump’s own actions ahead of the attack.
Department officials have said Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony did not alter their investigative strategy to methodically work their way from lower-level actors up to higher rungs of power. “The only pressure I feel, and the only pressure that our line prosecutors feel, is to do the right thing,” Mr. Garland said this spring.
But some of her explosive assertions — that Mr. Trump knew some of his supporters at a rally on Jan. 6, 2021, were armed, that he desperately wanted to join them as they marched to the Capitol and that the White House’s top lawyer feared Mr. Trump’s conduct could lead to criminal charges — were largely new to them and grabbed their attention.
Overt discussion of Mr. Trump and his behavior had been rare, except as a motive for the actions of others, a subtle but significant change that was underway even before Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony.
A small team of prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington has ramped up its investigation into a scheme to install fake state electors, spearheaded by lawyers who were in frequent contact with Mr. Trump. And the Justice Department’s watchdog is investigating efforts undertaken by Jeffrey Clark, a former department official who discussed the plan with Mr. Trump, to undo the results of the election.
A flurry of recent subpoenas related to the electors inquiry and raids initiated by the inspector general into Mr. Clark — which were done with the knowledge of the department’s senior leaders — suggest that those investigations are accelerating. At the very least, those moves indicate that prosecutors are inching closer to the former president...."